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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- The United Kingdom is restricting the use of implantable pumps for heart failure patients because of their track record.
The pump can help heart failure patients live and get their strength back while they wait for a transplant. But the UK's National Health Service evaluated the devices and says the technology should be limited, at least for now.
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"Although we believe that the devices have been developed sufficiently to prolong life for some very sick patients who have rapidly deteriorating heart failure, we don't feel they've been developed quite enough yet for widespread use amongst the whole heart failure population," reports lead researcher Linda Sharples, Ph.D.
A ventricular assist device (VAD) uses a battery or electricity-powered pump to send oxygen-rich blood throughout the body. It is used on patients whose heart pumping chambers are weak.
Sharples studied VADs in 70 patients in the United Kingdom who got the implants between April 2002 and December 2004. Most of them had an early or first-generation model of the heart pump.
Results reveal 30 of the 70 patients died before they got a donor heart. Researchers also report health care for the very sickest transplant candidates cost less than it did for VAD patients. Also, non-VAD patients had greater survival rates. However, the overall survival rate for the heart pump patients was 52 percent after one year.
A heart failure and transplant expert in the United States says he has seen better results with VADs.
"These people are critically ill and would otherwise die without the heart assist device," reports Leslie Miller, M.D., from Georgetown University School of Medicine. "The fact that we see a 70 to 75 percent survival to a heart transplant with these devices is really a pretty extraordinary accomplishment."
This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, who offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, go to: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.
SOURCE: Health Technology Assessment, 2006;10
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